ARCHITECTURE

PERCEPTION
CURATION

ARCH6049: Design + space syntax. Fall 2020

Perspectives and visibility fields in the museum

A STUDIO REPORT
S c h o o l o f A r c h i t e c t u r e - G e o r g i a Te c h
Editors: Studio participants: Violet Bernard, Kristy Eunhui Cho,
Kristy Cho Himanshi Chrangoo, Niket Joshi, Grace Solnae Lee,
Grace Lee Katherine Rae Massa, Elliot Park Jr., Varun Sethi, Hafsa
Katie Massa Nigar Siap, Sharvari Santosh Tamhane, Alexandra Deane
Elliot Park Jr. Watson, Savanna Jones Wheeler.
John Peponis
Varun Sethi Studio instructor: John Peponis, Professor, School of
Hafsa Siap Architecture, Georgia Tech
Alexandra Watson

Copyright © 2021
All rights reserved External studio critics and special contributors
Georgia Institute of Technology
School of Architecture Yves Abrioux. Professor Emeritus, University of Paris 8
247 4th Street NW Vincennes-Saint Denis
Atlanta, GA 30332-0155
Michael Benedikt. Hal Box Endowed Chair in Urbanism
ISBN: 978-1-7364944-4-8 Distinguished Professor, ACSA, School of Architecture,
University of Texas at Austin

Printing Michelle Bunch. Architectural Designer, Smith Dalia

RR Donnelley Architects

Sean Hanna. Professor, Bartlett School of Architecture,

Information, copies, permissions: University College London
Carmen New
Marketing and Events Coordinator Daniel Koch. Docent, researcher and teacher, Architecture,
404 385 1957 Royal Institute of Technology - KTH, Stockholm
carmen.new@design.gatech.edu
Kenneth J Knoespel. Professor Emeritus, Ivan Allen College
of the Liberal Arts, Georgia Tech

Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi, Professor, Department of

Support for this publication has been provided by the Classics, Stanford University
School of Architecture at Georgia Tech and by the Dean
William L Fash Award for Teaching Excellence, 2020. Sophia Psarra. Professor, Bartlett School of Architecture,
University College London

Barbara Maria Stafford. William B Ogden Distinguished

Service Professor Emerita, University of Chicago
Front cover drawing: Alexandra Watson. Frontispiece
sketch: Kristy Cho. Back cover drawing: Hafsa Siap. Emily Wirt. Architectural Designer, Square Feet Studio

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 Table of contents

4 John Peponis 58 Elliot Park

Syntaxes of seeing Jewelry museum

6 Alexandra Watson 64 Daniel Koch

Jewelry museum Configuration, geometry and spatial choreography

14 Barbara Maria Stafford 67 Yves Abrioux

Imagining the intermedial museum. Towards an Mapping architecture
architecture in union with its contents
70 Himanshi Chrangoo
18 Kristy Cho Maps museum
Jewelry museum
72 Niket Joshi
25 Sophia Psarra Jewelry museum
Architecture and narrative. A postscript
74 Violet Bernard
27 Varun Sethi Maps museum
Maps museum
76 Michael Benedikt
34 Sean Hanna Comments on the 2020 ‘design + space syntax’
The ambiguous typology of the gallery studio

36 Hafsa Siap 80 Varun Sethi, Alexandra Watson, Hafsa Siap, Kristy

Jewelry museum Cho, Elliot Park, Katie Massa, Grace Lee, John
Peponis
Movement and the temperament of syntactic
46 Savanna Jones structure
Jewelry museum
83 Kristy Cho, Grace Lee, Katie Massa, Elliot Park,
48 Kenneth J Knoespel Varun Sethi, Hafsa Siap, Alexandra Watson, John
Peponis
Mapping, museums and observatories
Presenting

50 Katie Massa 85 Selected bibliography

Maps museum

54 Grace Lee
Jewelry museum

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Here, I engage with architecture from a perspective
related to Judith Butler’s discussion of performativity
as structures-in-the making 1 . The relation of local,
spatial situatedness to the extended structuring of
social relations is of particular interest. This needs to be
done with care since, as Nick Kaye notes, architectural
space is not a precise enough symbolic system to
form statements with distinct meanings, nor abstract
and systemic enough to form a structure or lexicon2 .
This leads to an ongoing negotiation of situatedness
with space and architecture as active participants.
While, for instance, a stage holds a range of possible,
probable, and potential meanings and is embedded with
sets of (expected and suggested) social relations, the
particular meaning of that stage in a particular situation
will always-ever be a matter of contextual, situated
meaning-making. This does not leave architecture
innocent; rather, it is precisely because such situations
are dynamic social negotiations that architecture
participates in the structural aspects of performativity.
I will draw from concrete examples to address the
local situatedness of people to one another through
architectural configuration and geometry.
Easily evoked ‘architectural figures’, such as the
balcony, catwalk, square, closet, and glass box, describe
the (immediate, immanent) relations created between
people through spatial configuration 3 . The balcony,
for instance, constitutes an architectural figure where
the few (or the ‘subject’, the point of view) are watching
the many (or the ‘object’), and the catwalk as the
inverse, where the few (or the ‘subject’) is being looked
at, characterized by a looked-at-ness4 whether anyone
is actually looking or not. These figures arise from the
way in which architecture situates people in relation to
one another, with extended implications for how they
are to relate to one another, as well as to a potential or
imagined Other. Here, I will expand on these figures by
looking at them as narratives of life and action rather
than as static conditions.
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Configuration,
geometry and spatial
choreography
Daniel Koch
To highlight the role of configuration and geometry,
consider a pair of works by Mies van der Rohe and Lily
Reich: the Villa Tugendhat, the Berlin exhibition, the
Barcelona pavilion, and the Farnsworth House. These
have all been analyzed in-depth: José Quetglas 5
noted the extent to which the Barcelona Pavilion is a
stage; Irene Nierhaus 6 and Sophia Psarra7 discussed
how reflective surfaces of stone and glass constantly
present inhabitants or visitors with haunting images of
themselves as they move through the buildings; Michael
Benedikt 8 demonstrated how the geometry of the
Pavilion drives visitors to continue moving by revealing
new spatial information at every step. But the buildings
also situate subjects relative to one-another, and stage
this movement for the potentially watching Other.
The simplest case here, one could argue, is the
Farnsworth House; an architectural composition that
geometrically generates as much movement distance
as possible with as little wall as possible9 . By pushing
all movement to circle along the edge of the building,
movement is noticeably extended compared to more
traditional layouts. It also terminates in sharper
turns. Furthermore, this extended, sweeping pattern
of movement is staged in front of others who might,
for instance, be sitting in one of the chairs set against
the wall to face out towards the glass. Multiple design
choices, acting together, put the moving individual on
display.
In the Berlin exhibition and in the Barcelona Pavilion,
this figure is both extended and modulated. Movement is
still geometrically extended as well as put on display for
others—be it inhabitants or visitors. However, presence
of sharp turns is handled more deliberately, to create a
movement figure based on the motif ‘move-stop-turn’.
Thus, these plan geometries put people on stage for one
another in movement. Furthermore, the configuration
emphasizes the moving individual as one observed. Given
the reflective surfaces, this arguably also stages subjects
into self-awareness within the pattern of movement—a
constant reminder of looked-at-ness. This creates a
movement figure that alludes to a then-contemporary
interest in bodies in movement 10, but also arguably to
Lily Reich’s background in exhibition, display and fashion
design, considering the then-emergent particular ways
of fashion runways showcasing moving and turning
bodies11 .
We can contrast this with two museum buildings
brought to my attention by Linda Franken while I
supervised her Masters’ thesis on Curation at Stockholm
University 12 . As with the works of Mies and Riech, I will
simplify their movement morphologies to focus on
aspects that illustrate the line of reasoning. The first,
Peter Märkli’s La Congiunta, designed and built to house
reliefs and half-figures by the late Swiss sculptor Hans
Josephsohn in the small mountain village of Giornico
in Switzerland, formulates this relation between mover
and occupants almost in the opposite direction. An
axis of movement runs through one side of three main
exhibition spaces; the exhibited pieces are placed so
that viewing them requires turning one’s back to the
movement axis. This, arguably, captures parts of what
Tony Bennet 13 , Pierre Bourdieu and Alain Darbel14 ,or
Dorothea von Hantelmann15 discuss in approaching
museums as disciplining environments—even as most
often the circulation passes in-between visitors facing
away so as to view the artworks. The constant figure
of potentially being exposed to another visitor who may
observe you and your behavior without your knowing
leads to a continuous urge to adapt to expected and
acceptable patterns of behavior.
The second, Ryue Nishizawa’s Teshima Art Museum,
houses a single artwork by the Japanese artist Rei Naito.
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Here, the artwork—the surfacing of an underground
source of water into droplets, small pools, tiny rivulets
and other continuously changing shapes—is rather
located in the middle, in a building whose shape evokes
a drop. The boundary of the interior offers no corners or
protruding walls but takes a curved concrete shape with
only a few openings. Here, as in the works by Mies and
Reich, the architecture fosters movement once again,
but of another kind. It encourages a slow, contemplative
movement around the artwork instead of extended
sweeping walks. No sharp turns are involved. Most
importantly, the layout positions those engaging with
the artwork to potentially see one-another across it. To
the extent that visitors are on stage, they are on stage for
one-another, participating in one-another’s experience
of the work, and actively negotiating how their relation is
to be understood. Do eyes meet? How long? Repeatedly?
Does one encroach on another’s view? Does one move
away, making the moment fleeting, or stay, letting it last
whether acknowledged or not?
The reasoning can be extended to incorporate more
structural aspects of configuration; that is, how, where,
and in what type of situations subjects would encounter,
see, or be exposed to one another as they move through a
building, and how this can be understood as structuring
relations beyond the encounters themselves. To
exemplify, I will use a simple, imaginary building plan.
Here, movement is not extended behind nor in front
of any exhibit. Instead, movement between the different
parts passes through a central space. This creates a
potential ground of encounter, fostering eye-contact
for those moving between exhibition parts. But it also
allows purview 16 of the space and the monitoring of who
is where. This purview offers, for instance, the possibility
to choose whether to visit an exhibition area where others
are already present or opt for a currently unvisited part.
Both of these choices are structuring a local society, as
both would define—albeit differently—how one relates to
1. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble (New York: Routledge, 1999).
the Other. But what if visitors to such a museum have
2. Nick Kaye, Site-Specific Art (New York: Routledge, 2000); see
not seen one another? Or, if this is a larger structure or
also ‘morphic languages’, Bill Hillier & Julienne Hanson, The
another type of building, or city, what if it is not possible
Social Logic of Space (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
to continuously monitor the connecting space? Rather
Press, 1984).
than suggest that social relations are then structured by
3. Daniel Koch, ’Architecture Re-Configured’, Journal of Space
the encounters that happen, I will argue they are as much,
Syntax 1(1), 2010.
sometimes more, structured by those that do not: in the
4. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual pleasure and narrative cinema’,
projections of the actions and locations of others that
Screen 16(3), 1975.
are embedded in choices of our own actions, played out
5. José Quetglass, ‘Loss of Synthesis: Mies’s Pavilion’, in
in whom—specific or generic—we may seek to encounter
Architecture Theory Since 1968, ed. K. M. Hays (Cambridge, MA:
or avoid, and in what kind of situation17.
MIT Press, 2000).
T h e se example s sh ow h ow ar chite c tur e
6. Irene Nierhaus, ’The modern interior as a geography of
differentiates potentials of ‘who’ and ‘doing what’ is put
images, spaces and subjects’, in Designing the Modern Interior,
‘on stage’ and for ‘whom’. Of course, socially relevant
ed. Sparke, Massey, Keeble & Martin (Oxford: Berg, 2009).
actions are added to these fundamental morphologies
7. Sophia Psarra, Architecture and narrative (New York:
of avoidance, co-presence and potential co-awareness.
Routledge, 2009).
I believe that if we wish to discuss performativity and
8. Michael L. Benedikt, ‘To take hold of space’, Environment and
‘the social’ beyond immanent togetherness, we need to
Planning B 6, 1979.
more clearly engage with how architecture underpins
9. See further Daniel Koch, ‘On aesthetics and spatial
such dynamics as continuously evolving situations.
configuration’, in Proceedings of the 11th Space Syntax Symposium
These situations include the game played in conscious
(Lisbon: Instituto Superior Técnico, 2017).
or subconscious enactment or avoidance of these the manner that a geographical ฀base฀ map, however
10. E.g. Leo Charney & Vanessa R. Schwartz (ed.), Cinema and
morphological figures in situated action. We need to
the Invention of Modern Life (Berkeley: University of California
understand the relation between people and architecture
Press, 1995).
(space) not only in terms of environmental perception or
11. Caroline Evans, The Mechanical Smile (New Haven: Yale
cognition, not even in terms of social actions that play
University Press, 2013), see also Sherwin Simmons,
out in space, but also as morphologies of movement,
‘Expressionism in the Discourse of Fashion’, Fashion Theory
encounter and spatially situated behaviors. We need to
4(1), 2000.
understand how social relations are negotiated through
12. Linda Franken, INSIDE : OUTSIDE: A Study of Site-specificity and
space in the double sense that they are partly established
Narrative between Environment, Architecture and Art (Masters’
through their enactment in space, and partly upheld,
Thesis at Stockholm University, 2021, unpublished).
maintained or even (re)produced by space. In the case of
13. Tony Bennet, The Birth of the Museum (London:
museums, we must understand how viewing and coming
Routledge, 1995).
to terms with the exhibition contents is integrally linked
14. Pierre Bourdieu & Alain Darbel, The Love of Art
to negotiating our own identity as visitors, not only as
(Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1991).
individuals but also as individuals that become part of a
15. Dorothea von Hantelmann, ‘The rise of the exhibition
society of viewers.
and the exhibition as art’, in Aesthetics and Contemporary
Art, ed. A. Avanessian & L. Skrebowski (Berlin, Sternberg
Press, 2011).
16. John Peponis, ‘Building layouts as cognitive data’,
Cognitive Critique 6, 2012.
17. Daniel Koch, ‘Memory, Projection, and Imagination’,
Contour 3, 2017.

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